Suludere, Şirvan

Gūndīdzāl (today called Suludere) was historically inhabited by Syriac Orthodox Christians.^[3] In the Syriac Orthodox patriarchal register of dues of 1870, it was recorded that the village had 11 households, who paid 66 dues, and it did not have a church or a priest.^[3] According to Raymond Kévorkian, it was populated by Armenian-speaking adherents of the Church of the East.^[6] In a letter from Priest Ibrahim to Patriarch Ignatius Abdul Masih II, it is recorded that the village was attacked by about 100 men of the Danabkta kochers led by two sons of the chief of the tribe, Mijdad Agha, on 15 October 1895, amidst the Hamidian massacres, resulting in the killing of three men and a woman.^[7] However, an Armenian report details that half of the village's population was killed and the village headman was burned alive, whilst James Henry Monahan, the British Vice-Consul of Bitlis, noted that 12 were killed in an attack by Kurds of the Demli tribe in November 1895, including the village priest, and three families subsequently died of hunger or disease after the massacre.^[8] Local Kurds also plundered the village.^[8] The surviving villagers converted to Islam, but reconverted to Christianity in the summer of 1896.^[8] Monahan recorded that the village had 14 Syriac Orthodox households in 1898, in which year he noted that a number of Syriac Orthodox families from Gūndīdzāl had moved to Bitlis.^[9]

Notes

Citations